Pretty, Broken Things
Elizabeth Schmidt
He worked best by moonlight,
When his eyes glowed with it.
He saw things there that others forgot.
Pretty, broken things,
Abandoned by the roadside,
Tangled up in the wet and grime.
Wandering the boulevard of broken dreams,
Is where he found me.
Under the cold light of the lamppost willow-wisps.
A small, struggling, thing with broken wings,
Fallen by the wayside,
Cowering from the splashes of passing cars.
His hands were gentle but strong,
And, for a moment, it was God lifting me up...
But his voice was humble and shy.
A man’s voice soothed me,
With oddly familiar songs,
As he batted idly at the nightmares that circled like flies.
His home was cluttered with junk store treasures,
Both useful and arcane.
Yet there was an absentminded order there,
With everything quite content in it’s place.
Somehow I felt at home,
Tucked in amongst the flotsam of a thousand shipwrecks.
He fluttered to and fro,
Like a leaf on the wind.
I found my gaze following unbidden,
First this way, then that.
As he danced about his business,
like no one was watching.
It was then that I saw them,
Displayed behind glass and perched on pedestals.
Such beauty stared back at me…
All eyes asking, “Who are you?”
The stranger in their midst,
As much a surprise to them as it was to me.
I started up out of my seat, ready to jump.
Suddenly more afraid of ending up on the shelf,
Than falling back into the gutter.
Another trophy watching life through the glass,
Too fragile to live it,
With him or without him.
He turned to face my fear,
With a kind smile and a questioning tilt to his head,
A makeshift crown in his hands made of dreamstuff and hope.
“These aren’t the kind of dolls you play with.”
He confided, as he offered his prize with one hand,
And threw open the window with the other